The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 25

till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered." In one respect he would no longer disclaim ident.i.ty with Childe Harold. "Death had deprived him of his nearest connections." He had seen his friends "around him fall like leaves in wintry weather." He felt "like one deserted;" and in the "dusky shadow" of that early desolation he was destined to walk till his life's end. It is not without cause when "a man of great spirit grows melancholy."

In connection with this subject, it may be noted that lines 6 and 7 of stanza xcv. do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (_Letters_, October 14 and 31, 1811), that in these three _in memoriam_ stanzas (ix., xcv., xcvi.) he is bewailing an event which took place _after_ he returned to Newstead. The "more than friend" had "ceased to be" before the "wanderer" returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into his confidence.]

FOOTNOTES:

[113] {99} [Stanzas i.-xv. form a kind of dramatic prologue to the Second Canto of the Pilgrimage. The general meaning is clear enough, but the unities are disregarded. The scene s.h.i.+fts more than once, and there is a moral within a moral. The poet begins by invoking Athena (Byron wrote Athenae) to look down on the ruins of "her holy and beautiful house," and bewails her unreturning heroes of the sword and pen. He then summons an Oriental, a "Son of the Morning," Moslem or "light Greek,"

possibly a _Canis venaticus_, the discoverer or vendor of a sepulchral urn, and, with an adjuration to spare the sacred relic, points to the Acropolis, the cemetery of dead divinities, and then once more to the urn at his feet. "'Vanity of vanities--all is vanity!' G.o.ds and men may come and go, but Death 'goes on for ever.'" The scene changes, and he feigns to be present at the rifling of a barrow, the "tomb of the Athenian heroes" on the plain of Marathon, or one of the lonely tumuli on Sigeum and Rhoeteum, "the great and goodly tombs" of Achilles and Patroclus ("they twain in one golden urn"); of Antilochus, and of Telamonian Ajax. Marathon he had already visited, and marked "the perpendicular cut" which at Fauvel's instigation had been recently driven into the large barrow; and he had, perhaps, read of the real or pretended excavation by Signor Ghormezano (1787) of a tumulus at the Sigean promontory. The "mind's eye," which had conjured up "the shattered heaps," images a skull of one who "kept the world in awe,"

and, after moralizing in Hamlet's vein on the humorous catastrophe of decay, the poet concludes with the Preacher "that there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave." After this profession of unfaith, before he returns to Harold and his pilgrimage, he takes up his parable and curses Elgin and all his works. The pa.s.sage as a whole suggests the essential difference between painting and poetry. As a composition, it recalls the frontispiece of a seventeenth-century cla.s.sic. The pictured scene, with its superfluity of accessories, is grotesque enough; but the poetic scenery, inconsequent and yet vivid as a dream, awakens, and fulfills the imagination. (_Travels in Albania_, by Lord Broughton, 1858, i. 380; ii. 128, 129, 138; _The Odyssey_, xxiv.

74, _sq_. See, too, Byron's letters to his mother, April 17, and to H.

Drury, May 3, 1810: _Letters_, 1898, i. 262.)]

[do] {100} _Ancient of days! august Athenae! where_.--[MS. D.]

[dp] _Gone--mingled with the waste_----.--[MS. erased.]

[114] {101} ["Stole," apart from its restricted use as an ecclesiastical vestment, is used by Spenser and other poets as an equivalent for any long and loosely flowing robe, but is, perhaps inaccurately, applied to the short cloak (_tribon_), the "habit" of Socrates when he lived, and, after his death, the distinctive dress of the cynics.]

[dq] ----_gray flits the Ghost of Power_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[dr] ----_whose altars cease to burn_.--[D.]

[ds] ----_whose Faith is built on reeds_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[115] {102} [Compare Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_, act iii, sc. 1, lines 5-7--

"Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep."]

[dt] _Still wilt thou harp_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[du] _Though 'twas a G.o.d, as graver records tell_.--[MS. erased.]

[116] [The demiG.o.ds Erechtheus and Theseus "appeared" at Marathon, and fought side by side with Miltiades (Grote's _History of Greece_, iv.

284).]

[117] {103} [Compare Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, act v. sc. 1, _pa.s.sim_.]

[118] [Socrates affirmed that true self-knowledge was to know that we know nothing, and in his own case he denied any other knowledge; but "this confession of ignorance was certainly not meant to be a sceptical denial of all knowledge." "The idea of knowledge was to him a boundless field, in the face of which he could not but be ignorant" (_Socrates and the Socratic Schools_, by Dr. E. Zeller, London, 1868, p. 102).]

[119] [Stanzas viii. and ix. are not in the MS.

The expunged lines (see _var._ i.) carried the Lucretian tenets of the preceding stanza to their logical conclusion. The end is silence, not a reunion with superior souls. But Dallas objected; and it may well be that, in the presence of death, Byron could not "guard his unbelief," or refrain from a renewed questioning of the "Grand Perhaps." Stanza for stanza, the new version is an improvement on the original. (See _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 169. See, too, letters to Hodgson, September 3 and September 13, 1811: _Letters_, 1898, ii. 18, 34.)]

[dv]

_Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I_ _Look not for Life, where life may never be:_ _I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;_ _Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,_ _Thou bold Discoverer in an unknown sea_ _Of happy Isles and happier Tenants there;_ _I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;_[-1]

_Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,_[-2]

_Which if it be thy sins will never let thee share_.[-3]

--[MS. D. erased.]_

[-1] The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.--[MS. D.]

[-2]

_But look upon a scene that once was fair_.--[Erased.]

_Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair_.--[Erased.]

[-3]

_As those, which thou delight'st to rear in upper air_.--[Erased.]

_Yet lovs't too well to bid thine erring brother share_.--[D. erased.]

[120] {104} [Byron forwarded this stanza in a letter to Dallas, dated October 14, 1811, and was careful to add, "I think it proper to state to you, that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my arrival here, and not to the death of any _male_ friend" (_Letters_.

1898, ii. 57). The reference is not to Edleston, as Dallas might have guessed, and as Wright (see _Poetical Works_, 1891, p. 17) believed.

Again, in a letter to Dallas, dated October 31, 1811 (_ibid_., ii. 65), he sends "a few stanzas," presumably the lines "To Thyrza," which are dated October 31, 1811, and says that "they refer to the death of one to whose name you are a _stranger_, and, consequently, cannot be interested (_sic_) ... They relate to the same person whom I have mentioned in Canto 2nd, and at the conclusion of the poem." It follows from this second statement that we have Byron's authority for connecting stanza ix. with stanzas xcv., xcvi., and, inferentially, his authority for connecting stanzas ix., xcv., xcvi. with the group of "Thyrza" poems. And there our knowledge ends. We must leave the mystery where Byron willed that it should be left. "All that we know is, nothing can be known."]

[dw] {105}

_Whate'er beside_} } _Futurity's behest_.[-]

_Howe'er may be_ } Or seeing thee no more to sink in sullen rest_.--[MS. D.]

[-] [See letter to Dallas, October 14, 1811.]

[121] {106} [For note on the "Elgin Marbles," see _Introduction to the Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 453-456.]

[dx]

_The last, the worst dull Robber, who was he?_ _Blush Scotland such a slave thy son could be_-- _England! I joy no child he was of thine:_ _Thy freeborn men revere what once was free,_ _Nor tear the Sculpture from its saddening shrine,_ _Nor bear the spoil away athwart the weeping Brine_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[dy]

_This be the wittol Picts ign.o.ble boast_.--[MS. D.]

_To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time hath spared:_ _Cold and accursed as his native coast_.--[MS. D. erased]

[122] ["On the plaster wall of the Chapel of Pandrosos adjoining the Erechtheum, these words have been very deeply cut--

'Quod non fecerunt Goti, Hoc fecerunt Scoti'"

(_Travels in Albania_, 1858, i. 299). M. Darmesteter quotes the original: "mot sur les Barberini" ("Quod non fecere Barbari, Fecere Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian invasion of Greece in 1686. (See _The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's _Hist. of Greece_, v. 189.)]

[dz] {107}

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy while Athenae mourned?

Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung, Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned, From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign, Like Attila the Hun was surely horned,[-1]

Who wrought the ravage amid works divine: Oh that Minerva's voice lent its keen aid to mine.--[MS. D. erased.]

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy in Athenae's tears?

Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung, Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[-2]

The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears The last poor blunder of a bleeding land: That she, whose generous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand, Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.--[MS. D.][-3]